The Remarkable Miss Yule of Tarradale: A woman in a man’s world

Dr Eric Grant

Please note that the induction loop is functional now and will be used at this meeting

Dr Eric Grant is making a very welcome return to the Cromarty History Society to share more of his thorough and wide ranging research on a subject ‘close to home’, as Tarradale House near Muir of Ord is where he lives.

Eric is a retired lecturer in historical geography in archaeology and has spent many years studying the archaeology of the area and the rich history of Tarradale House and its previous owners.

Amy Frances Yule (1852–1916) was largely privately educated by her parents and most of her early life was spent in Sicily and Greece, the latter experience leading to her compiling the definitive edition of Murray’s Handbook to Greece. She bought Tarradale in the 1890s, where her great-uncle Sir Roderick Murchison, the eminent Victorian geologist was born in 1792.

Amy Yule never married and was very much a “lady laird” who set about extending and improving Tarradale. She added a library and outbuildings and a walled garden, undertaking all the technical correspondence with builders and tradesmen herself. Although she seems to have been basically a kind and generous person who supported many philanthropic causes, she was immensely independent and was noted for arguing with ministers during their sermons.

When she died she left Tarradale House and all her money to “The Murchison of Taradale Memorial Trust” to provide a “place of rest and refreshment for poor scholars”, thus creating one of the earliest centres of adult education in the Highlands.

There is no known portrait or photograph of Amy Yule, but this talk will paint a vivid picture of a “remarkable” woman, a 100 years on.

Cromarty History Society meets in the West Church Hall, Cromarty at 7.30pm on the the third Thursday of each month, September - April